

It is not actually possible within the game to obtain a bottle of wine, nor is it required to proceed. Upon ordering wine, the party would be sent by the bartender to his cellar to fetch a bottle themselves.
#Bards tale for mac emulator manual
However, this hint was not present in the manual included with the C64 release of the game. There was a hint to this in the manual ( Hint: The first dungeon is the wine cellar of the only tavern in town which serves wine. Finding this first dungeon (the Wine Cellar) required the party to order some wine at a certain tavern. In the sewers, numerous hints are found, including the name of the Mad God. The tower cannot be entered without a key, however. The first dungeon is the Wine Cellar (1 level) of one particular tavern, which turns out to be connected to the Sewers of Skara Brae (3 levels) that in turn feature an exit that leads to the otherwise inaccessible southwestern corner of the city where Mangar's Tower, the final dungeon, is located.The latter are mazes of various kinds-cellars, sewers, catacombs, or fortresses-full of monsters and riddles, some guarded by magical statues that come to life to attack trespassing player parties. One street seems to lead south endlessly, by actually teleporting the party back to its beginning upon reaching the portion where the city walls would be.Ĭertain buildings within the city are special, such as the Adventurer's Guild, Garth's Equipment Shoppe, the Review Board (which is unmarked and must be found first, and is the only place where characters can advance in experience levels), various taverns and temples, and the dungeons. The main city gates which open to the west are blocked by snow, and remain impassable throughout the game. Access to one tower in the northeastern and southwestern city corner each is blocked by locked gates. The (fictional) town of Skara Brae consists of 30x30 map tiles containing either buildings or streets (plus gates and magical guardian statues blocking certain streets). Game progress is made through advancing the characters so that they are powerful enough to defeat the increasingly dangerous foes and monsters in the dungeons, obtaining certain items relevant to solving the overall quest, and obtaining information. In the actual game, the player forms a group of up to six characters. Between occasional sips from his mug, he strums a lute and sings: The introduction depicts a bard sitting in a tavern. Luckily you have a Bard with you to sing your glories, if you survive. You are the leader of this ragtag group of freedom fighters. And who was left to resist? Only a handful of unproven young Warriors, junior Magic Users, a couple of Bards barely old enough to drink, and some out of work Rogues. The future of Skara Brae hung in the balance. Then, one night the town militiamen all disappeared. Mangar froze the surrounding lands with a spell of Eternal Winter, totally isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Evil creatures oozed into Skara Brae and joined his shadow domain. Long ago, when magic still prevailed, the evil wizard Mangar the Dark threatened a small but harmonious country town called Skara Brae. The following text from the box cover summarizes the premise: In August 2018, a remastered version was released for Microsoft Windows, followed by the Xbox One release in 2019.
#Bards tale for mac emulator series
The earliest editions of the game used a series title of Tales of the Unknown, but this title was dropped for later ports of The Bard's Tale and subsequent games in the series. It spawned The Bard's Tale series of games and books. The game was ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIGS, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Macintosh, and NES. It was produced by Interplay Productions in 1985 and distributed by Electronic Arts. The Bard's Tale is a fantasy role-playing video game designed and programmed by Michael Cranford for the Apple II.
